ARRSE have partnered with Armadillo Merino to bring you an ARRSE exclusive, generous discount offer on their full price range.
To keep you warm with the best of Merino gear, visit www.armadillomerino.co.uk and use the code: NEWARRSE40 at the checkout to get 40% off!
This superb deal has been generously offered to us by Armadillo Merino and is valid until midnight on the the 28th of February.

Go to page

Go to page

LE

A Bill which aims to privatise the social provision of health care, which nobody voted for, is apparently going to be "forced through" by the government, regardless of almost unanimous opposition from the professions.

Naturally, this being Britain, the public have had absolutely no say on this farce.

This section of the article really does sum up the dictatorial approach of British politics:

"No 10 acknowledged it may have taken its eye off the ball, allowing opposition to the bill to re-emerge."

So the objective, presumably, was to supress all opposition and force the Bill through to a background of silence.

Lansley, the prick, in case anybody forgot, has his own motives for bringing this Bill to Parliament:

LE

A Bill which aims to privatise the social provision of health care, which nobody voted for, is apparently going to be "forced through" by the government, regardless of almost unanimous opposition from the professions.

Naturally, this being Britain, the public have had absolutely no say on this farce.

This section of the article really does sum up the dictatorial approach of British politics:

"No 10 acknowledged it may have taken its eye off the ball, allowing opposition to the bill to re-emerge."

So the objective, presumably, was to supress all opposition and force the Bill through to a background of silence.

Lansley, the prick, in case anybody forgot, has his own motives for bringing this Bill to Parliament:

I do so very hope so. Get this through to your brain - the NHS is a failure.
- It does not make efficient, or even slightly efficient, use of the resources thrown at it.
- It's not been copied as it is crap. Some other Countries may have a similar scheme, but none has anything as inefficient and monolithic as the NHS.
- It consistently provides healthcare results lower than that of other European Nations.
- It is ruled by massive vested interests (TUs of the Doctors and Nurses for a start).
- It has a management system from Hell.

It's crap. Scrap it, copy the French, or German, or Australian, or Irish, or any other ****ing system. The NHS is causing unecessary sufferering and premature death for thousands of peple each year - it's time it was ended.

I do so very hope so. Get this through to your brain - the NHS is a failure.
- It does not make efficient, or even slightly efficient, use of the resources thrown at it.
- It's not been copied as it is crap. Some other Countries may have a similar scheme, but none has anything as inefficient and monolithic as the NHS.
- It consistently provides healthcare results lower than that of other European Nations.
- It is ruled by massive vested interests (TUs of the Doctors and Nurses for a start).
- It has a management system from Hell.

It's crap. Scrap it, copy the French, or German, or Australian, or Irish, or any other ****ing system. The NHS is causing unecessary sufferering and premature death for thousands of peple each year - it's time it was ended.

Yes, and the idea that with this Bill you are not substituting one vested interest (professional colleges and unions) with another (the wallets of the shareholders of private providers) is rather risible.

LE

That's a fair point, and one of the reasons I think the GP consortia idea (already being put in place, never mind this bill) is bonk. However, if there's a toss-up between the two.. It was more a point about whether politicians and clever-**** Oxbridge types who work in think-tanks etc know better than healthcare professionals. The government is also keen to privatise the ambulance service. Stand by to get bent over if you call 999 especially if we copy the Yank system: their EMTs are far less qualified than our paramedics.

Depends upon your definition of "non-essential". Elective surgery I would on the whole not like to see funded through social provision. However the discretion over what is 'essential' is now regional and there is some anecdotal evidence that clinically necessary surgery has been classified as being non-essential, forcing patients to pay for it from their own resources (this includes things such as removal of melanomas, or ingrown nails). There is nothing to stop the exact same clinicians supplying the service on a paid basis.

To that extent, Medicine is going the same way as Dentistry, where a clinician is given total discretion over what constitutes clinical necessity and he can freely place your treatment requirements outside of the locus of necessity and ask you to pay a very substantial fee to access what, by right, ought to be funded socially.

I recently went to a dentist who told me that I require a filling, but that he cannot give me a filling on the NHS for at least six months because he needs to monitor my dental habits over a long period of time, and even after that, the filling would be visibly metallic and not white. Whereas if I paid him a very large sum of money there and then, he could immediately provide the treatment and I could have an enamel-coloured filling.

Medicine very likely to go the same way - indeed, this is the whole purpose of the reforms.

My (naive) concern is highlighted by the PIP implant saga where the leading implant surgery outfit (tits-r-us, i think) just threw their arms in the air and said we cant afford to remove the implants, we'll be broke, and flately refused to put things right. OK, it's just boobs but won't that same 'free market' thinking carry on if it's, say, heart surgery.

LE

it already does. Private providers fall over themselves to do things like cataract operations because they are (usually) quick, effective and cheap. They steer clear of the complicated stuff because it costs more to do and has a higher risk factor.

LE

Nonsense. NI contributions were absorbed into the overall 'Tax Take' many years ago. NHS funding comes from the same bucket as defence, social payments, education, etc.

And still, for all the support here for the NHS, no-one has explained exactly what is so good about it. It's not cheap, it's not efficient, it's not fast, so what is wrong with scrapping it and doing as other Countries do, you know, those with higher life expectencies and far greater cancer survival rates than ours? Like almost every other Country in Europe, for example?

LE

Nonsense. NI contributions were absorbed into the overall 'Tax Take' many years ago. NHS funding comes from the same bucket as defence, social payments, education, etc.

And still, for all the support here for the NHS, no-one has explained exactly what is so good about it. It's not cheap, it's not efficient, it's not fast, so what is wrong with scrapping it and doing as other Countries do, you know, those with higher life expectencies and far greater cancer survival rates than ours? Like almost every other Country in Europe, for example?

I agree with you about NI, but it is still theoretically a compulsory social insurance system.

There are performance arguments in favour of the NHS - it is extremely cheap, the only comparably cheap system is the Dutch system, although that does not confer a universal right of access which is free at the point of use (it is a social insurance/state underwritten hybrid system). It is extremely good at critical care (both the NHS and the Dutch system). Issues to do with life expectancy and survival rates are as cultural as they are professional.

However this is rather beside the point I was trying to make, which is two fold really:

1) What is the problem to which privatisation is the answer? The most marketised system in the world (the US system) is also the least efficient, has by far the highest management costs and produces an extremely poor life expectancy rate.

2) If the logic of reform is so irrefutable, why not put the argument to the electorate? Like everything else in British politics it is forced through by a domineering executive branch of government which only consults the wishes of its electorate by compulsion and not by volition.

LE

I recently went to a dentist who told me that I require a filling, but that he cannot give me a filling on the NHS for at least six months because he needs to monitor my dental habits over a long period of time, and even after that, the filling would be visibly metallic and not white. Whereas if I paid him a very large sum of money there and then, he could immediately provide the treatment and I could have an enamel-coloured filling.

My sympathies for your teeth, however are you suggesting that the dentist should not have taken a long trem view of your habits, treated the symptom and not the root cause, and most importantly made your teeth beautiful with a more expensive white filling as a result of your negectful dental hygine.

The NHS was not founded to make people look beautiful. It spends far too much time on treating conditions which are avoidable. The 'cultural' problem of an NHS which is seen as a free panacea to all life ailments is that people lose the sense of personal responsibility. Don't smoke, drink sensibly, keep your weight down, brush your teeth, stay out of the midday sun, don't get gash tats. Naaaaaahhh, the NHS will sort me out mate. That's why it's overloaded, creaking at the seams and running out of cash. We already have privatisation of health care - dispensing, dentistry, optical services, why shouldn't we add in cataracts, bunions and such like.

I'm too old and lazy to do multiple quotes so can I respond to another point you made.

The reasons we don't always go to the public vote about every departmental reform are a) we are not switzerland, b) the public are not necessarily the best informed, and c) the public do not always take the long term or moral consequences into account. Otherwise we'd have hanging restored and massive tax cuts all round.